The ten members of the Idaho-based New Life Children's Refuge (NCLR) arrested by Haitian authorities for attempting to abduct 33 Haitian children and spirit them into the Dominican Republic are part of an intertwined Southern Baptist network that involves the adoption of orphans.
The adoption network involves operations located at three addresses in Idaho that is linked to a Florida-based organization. According to an NCLR Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission document, NCLR's Haitian Team arrested by Haitian authorities is based at the East Side Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho. However, donations to NCLR are made through a Wells Fargo Bank account maintained by the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho. Haiti's Social Affairs Minister said two Haitians were also arrested with the Americans and cited the involvement of two pastors, one in Haiti and the other in Atlanta. The Haitian pastor who handed the Haitian children over to the American group was identified as being with a group called the Sharing Jesus Ministries.
Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive confirmed that Haitian children were being trafficked out of the devastated nation. NBC News reported that one of the children NCLR tried to remove from Haiti said her parents were still alive and that she was told she was going on a short vacation. NBC News reported that the director of the SOS Children’s Village in Croix des Bouquets said the Haitian police told him the NCLR group was planning to sell the traumatized children for $10,000 each. The Austrian-run orphanage took custody of the 33 children who were taken into custody by Haitian authorities at the Dominican border crossing.
Bellerive said some Haitian children were being trafficked for their organs. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, the National Security Council spokesman during the Clinton administration, and now the press shill for Hillary Clinton, said the Haitian adoption system that has been established "is working effectively." Crowley, a retired Air Force officer, is recognized by Washington insiders as an apologist and cover-up specialist for U.S. intelligence operations. He honed his skills when the U.S. feigned ignorance about the involvement of western nations in what prompted the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.
A statement on the Central Valley Baptist Church's website states: "A ten member church team traveled to Haiti to help rescue children from one or more orphanages that had been devastated in the earthquake on January 12. The children were being taken to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic where they could be cared for and have their medical and emotional needs attended to. Our team was falsely arrested today and we are doing everything we can from this end to clear up the misunderstanding that has occurred in Port au Prince." The ten Americans include members from the Meridian and Twin Falls churches, one from Bethel Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, and a businessman from Amarillo, Texas.
The NCLR, according to the group's mission statement, conducts business from an address at 1577 N. Linder Rd., Kuna, ID 83634. According to the mission statement, the group of Idahoans planned to travel to Santo Domingo on January 22 and charter a bus and drive to Port-au-Prince to "gather 100 orphans from the streets and collapsed orphanages, then return to the DR [Dominican Republic]." The document also states that on January 24, the group's bus planned to arrive in Cabarete, DR at New Life Children Refuge. However, the Haitian authorities arrested the NCLR group on the evening of January 29 at the Malpasse border crossing with the Dominican Republic with the 33 children said to be orphaned. There has been no mention of what became of the plan to take 100 orphans the group claimed it was to collect "from the streets" to deposit in Cabarete on January 24.
The NCLR document claims God "provided an interim solution in nearby Cabarete, where we will be leasing a 45-room hotel and converting it into an orphanage until the building is complete." The "new building" refers to a new church, school, and orphanage at Magante on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. The new orphanage is planned to hold up to 200 children from newly-born infants to ten years old with future plans to house children up to the age of 16. The complex, reported to be a joint operation with the New Life Adoption Foundation, is also planned to include a chapel, medical facility, a greenhouse and farm for cows and chickens, a seaside restaurant, and seaside villas for "adopting parents to stay while fulfilling requirement for 60‐90 day visit as well as Christian volunteers/vacationing families." The directors of NCLR are listed as Laura Silsby and Charisa Coulter. They are president and vice president, respectively, of the Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission team detained by the Haitian authorities.
The NCLR team arrested claimed it was transporting orphans left homeless with the destruction of the New Life Children's Center orphanage in Port-au-Prince.
The involvement of human organ traffickers with the abduction of children comes as Narco News's Brenda Norrell reported that Evergreen International Aviation, Inc. of McMinnville, Oregon and the Israeli firm Elbit Systems have teamed up to provide unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) reconnaissance of "rural orphanages in Haiti employing Elbit Systems Skylark" UAV.
On February 22, 2008, WMR reported that Dr. Francis Delmonico, Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, told a February 21, 2008 seminar at the Cato Institute in Washington that Israel was outsourcing kidney and liver transplants to Colombia and the Philippines. It was latr reported that Israel Defense Force personnel were harvesting the organs of Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces. WMR's February 22, 2008 report also stated: "Israel has, in the past, been a center for dubious human organ trafficking operations. It is also the case that Palestinian prisoners in Israel have sought to sell their kidneys to feed their children. The Israel Medical Association is opposing a bill that would allow the donors of certain organs to be reimbursed by the state. The group claims this will 'open the door' to organ sales."
There is another reason to be fearful of the trafficking of Haitian children to the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The tourist centers that populate the coast attract a number of pedophiles looking for children trafficked for sexual exploitation. On April 11, 1997, the Inter-Press Service reported: "In the Dominican Republic, where there are entire beaches and centers dedicated to sex tourism, another variant of prostitution are the 'hanky panky' workers." Hanky panky workers are beach boys and girls as young as 13 years old who are introduced to foreign sex tour visitors.
On June 22, 2005, Michael E. O'Connor, Jr. Director of Operations of the South Asia International Justice Mission told the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy, Trade and Technology that websites are used to provide pedophiles with information on the child sex trade in the Dominican Republic. He cited one posting dated January 19, 2002 by a prospective visitor to the Dominican Republic: "I am interested in meeting small, petite, young (18, or ones who look younger) with light skin and haven't had any babies. Am I asking too much? How can I meet these higher end girls and what would they cost per hour or per day? Are they best picked up a bar or Brothel? I'm 45 years old but I like them yung and babyless with a fine body and nice skin. What are the best place or people to contact for this kind? Are there newspaper ads that offer higher end girls .. Any comments ( + or - ) are appreciated. Do they mind if you video tape them while you are with them?"
Dyncorp International, the private military contractor that received a 2008 contract to train the Haitian National Police, was cited in a child prostitution scandal in the Balkans.
NCLR may have links far beyond Idaho. On the January 29, 2010 "The O'Reilly Factor" broadcast on Fox News, Geraldo Rivera stated on the subject of what relief charities are honest in Haiti: "What I would suggest -- I saw a little place called the World Harvest Mission, one of these small Christian faith driven -- the New Life Children fund. Give to the people who are actually hands on helping."
The Associated Press reported on January 15, 2010, that the New Life Children's Center in Port-au-Prince was run by the World Harvest Missions Outreach of Lake Wales, Florida. The group's website echoes the charge made by Rev. Pat Robertson linking Haiti to Satan: "Haiti is probably the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, while practically the neighbor to the richest country in the world. Haiti is also the voodoo capital of the world, was dedicated to Satan at its independence, and is now a growing New Age tourist mecca." The group, formed in 1977, also lists one of its Haiti projects as the "New Life Children’s Home."
Christian organizations that operate missionaries and orphanages are set up in a manner much like CIA front companies. Many use the same names and their links are circuitously masked mainly due to the opaqueness derived from their tax-exempt status. A World Harvest Missions operation based in Jacksonville, Indiana has supported a Baptist orphanage in civil war-ravaged Liberia.
The case of the attempted children abductees in Haiti mirrors a similar case involving a group with links to French President Nicolas Sarkozy. On October 29, 2007, WMR reported: "a mysterious French group known as 'Zoe's Ark,' and which stands accused of attempting to spirit 103 Chadian children out of Chad to France, is suspected of links to French neocon President Nicolas Sarkozy . . . After Chadian and French authorities accused Zoe's Ark of criminal activity, the group said it had the support of President Sarkozy, his now-estranged wife Cecilia, and the Elysee Palace."
On November 5, 2007, WMR followed up with the following: "Sarkozy flew to Ndjamena, the Chadian capital, to intercede on behalf of French, Belgian, and Spanish nationals who had been arrested for suspicions by Chad of involvement in the caper. One of the French journalists who was freed is now reporting that Zoe's Ark is a duplicitous organization . . . The Spanish charter crew members appear to have been duped by Zoe's Ark into believing the charity was legitimately operating in Chad with official Chadian government sanction using another corporate identity, Children Rescue . . . It has now been learned that the 103 children to be spirited out of Chad were not Darfur war orphans from Sudan but children with families from Chad. Zoe's Ark aid workers even wrapped bandages around some of the children's arms and dabbed the bandages with a liquid that appeared to be dried blood to make it appear that they had been wounded. Other children were lured with biscuits and candy by aid workers . . . Some Chadian families revealed the Zoe's Ark workers promised that the children would be taken to school in Chad to learn Arabic, French, English, and their local dialect while other children were told they would be schooled in France and then receive big cars to drive. It has now been revealed that French Army peacekeepers in Chad provided Zoe's Ark with logistics assistance in the African nation . . . Zoe's Ark is an enigma. It was started in the aftermath of the tsunami of December 26, 2004 by 'French motoring enthusiasts' and set up four camps in Indonesia's Banda Aceh for children displaced by the tsunami. WMR has previously reported on the trafficking of orphans from the tsunami in Indonesia and Thailand, some of it for prostitution purposes . . . During the presidential election campaign, Sarkozy opined that pedophilia is not properly understood. The comment set off a firestorm in France and earned Sarkozy a strong rebuke from the Archbishop of Paris. Some critics of the mercurial Sarkozy began referring to him as 'Sarko le Pedo.'"
On December 31, 2007, WMR also reported that French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner was also linked to Zoe's Ark: "Not only has Zoe's Ark been linked to Sarkozy and the Elysee Palace but Sarkozy's Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, has also been connected to Zoe's Ark. Kouchner who founded the humanitarian groups Doctors Without Borders and Doctors of the World, reportedly knew of Quai d'Orsay (French Foreign Ministry) classified reports on the illegal activities of Zoe's Ark but failed to take appropriate action. Zoe's Ark has also been linked to the extraction of children from Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia following the devastating tsunami on December 26, 2004 and the adoption of Cambodian orphans . . . some French media outlets have reported on the close relationship between Zoe's Ark's number two leader, Stephanie Dhainault-Lefebvre, of Paris Biotech Sante, a semi-public medical research firm, and Dr. Francois Sarkozy, a pediatrician who is also a director of Paris Biotech Sante. Francois Sarkozy is the brother of Nicolas Sarkozy. Francois Sarkozy is involved in the testing of bio-pharmaceuticals on human subjects. AIDS- and cancer-treating pharmaceuticals are of particular interest to Francois Sarkozy and Paris Biotech Sante. The possibility that Sarkozy, who has infuriated African leaders with his racist rhetoric, may have been providing cover for the use of African child test subjects by his brother's Big Pharma friends cannot be ruled out."
Kouchner criticized the Obama administration for turning Port-au-Prince airport into a virtual annex of Washington. However, based on the Chad child abduction scandal, Kouchner's indignation may have been far from altruistic.
